


cruising low, flashing white

by kisahawklin



Category: Leverage, Supernatural
Genre: Community: intoabar, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3910210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel walks into a bar and meets... Tara Cole (Leverage)!</p><p><em>There is no way those guys are FBI agents,</em> Tara thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cruising low, flashing white

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a gazillion to M for beta - this would be a lot more repetitive and boring without her. <333
> 
> Title from Motörhead's Lawman.

Tara sits quietly at the end of the bar, wondering how the hell her life has come to this. This dive is filthy and has only domestic beer and there's not a person in the place who owns a car worth more than her shoes.

Ugh.

She likes Parker, but Tara is going to demand hazard pay for this. They could've sent Eliot along for a little backup, or a drinking partner, at least.

The bell on the door jangles and Tara can't help looking over - anything to give her a change in the scenery of the mind-numbingly boring bar. In walks a man in a trenchcoat, and she raises an eyebrow. Her night just got a whole lot more interesting. 

There's something off about him, something Tara can't quite place, but before she has even half a second to analyze it, he's followed by two more men in suits. Her attention shifts to them, and the strange way they're out of place in every way possible - in this bar, with the guy in the trenchcoat, and even in their own suits.

The suits are cheap but fit well, which is an oddity in itself for someone as tall as the one guy, and the get-up says "feds" but the posture says "we belong in joints like this and spend more than our fair share of time here."

She still can't get a bead on the guy in the trench coat, but those two? They're conning someone – and badly. No one would ever buy that they're FBI – the tall one's hair is too long and the not-quite-as-tall one nowhere near assholish enough for how pretty he is. Sure, it's faded a little, he's got some mileage on him, but he's beautiful – and was probably a real pretty boy when he was younger. All of which guarantees that if he were in the bureau, he'd be an asshole out to prove himself.

All three of them make a beeline for the bar, and she catches the bartender's eye, giving him a head nod to bring him over. He, like the rest of the rednecks in this bar, including her mark, has been watching her not-so-surreptitiously all evening. She's in jeans and a simple blouse, but even in that she's overdressed for this place. Maybe if she put her hair up in a ponytail.

Ugh.

The bartender comes over and she turns on the charm, keeping him occupied long enough that the three men get tired of waiting at the other end of the bar and make their way over to her and Frank. She smiles warmly at them, not surprised to get a kind smile and dismissal out of the tall one and leering sort of smile and lookover from the pretty one. The other one – she doesn't know what to call him except "strange" – scowls at her. She's never gotten that reaction from a man before, and everything about him screams _wrong_. He gives her the heebie jeebies.

"Excuse us, miss," the pretty one says, flashing a reasonable fake badge, "but we need to speak to the bartender here."

Tara smiles and tips her beer up for a drink. Thankfully, Frank isn't about to be polite and offer them somewhere else to talk, and eventually the tall one says, "We need to talk to you about Kevin Schneider."

"Oh, Kev?" The bartender smirks. "Yeah, he was a regular here. Shame what happened to him."

Now Tara is keyed up; who the hell dresses up like feds to actually investigate a case? She glances over the two men once more, and yep, it's definite. No shoulder holsters, guns in the back of their pants, for god's sake – how have they not shot their asses off?

"Excuse me," a deep, gravelly voice says in her ear. "Could I talk to you for a moment?"

She turns to see the strange one standing waaaay too close. She hadn't noticed him approach, which is annoying, even if she _was_ pretty distracted by the handsome not-feds.

"Oh," she says, caught off guard and for possibly the first time in her life, without the right thing to say on the tip of her tongue. He doesn't seem to notice, just stares at her intensely, keeping her eyes much longer than any normal person would. She would think he's playing her, except he's so completely guileless, absolutely nothing going on in his eyes except looking at her. It's creepy.

"Over here," he says, indicating they should move away from the bar. She raises an eyebrow at him, but gets off her stool. It feels good to stand up and she shifts from side to side to stretch her legs a bit.

"What can I do for you, officer?" she asks.

"Agent," he answers, and these guys are getting into laughably bad territory here. Two FBI agents, sure, but three? It's ridiculous.

They've got the charm and confidence part of it, though, she has to admit. You can sell a lot with the right attitude and a nice smile, and these guys know that much, at least.

"All right," she says. "I'll bite. What can I do for you, _agent_?" She dresses the statement so heavily in sarcasm that he has to know she doesn't believe a word any of them are saying.

"Look," he says, turning his baby blues on her, this time less creepy and more earnest. "We are here to help. Please just let us do our jobs."

Huh. Tara smiles at him, wide and genuine-looking, and says, "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

Suddenly, they're halfway to the jukebox in the back of the room and she doesn't even remember moving. She takes a step back, wondering if she's been doing this for the last couple minutes, being backed up by the man with the compelling eyes and surprising voice. He's a much better con man than she gave him credit for. Not even Sophie can pull those tricks on her, but he just effortlessly maneuvered her halfway across the room.

"Hey," she says, reduced to honesty because something about this guy makes her want to send a text to see how fast Eliot can get here, "I'm here doing a job, too. It's okay, we're all okay."

He tilts his head, his blue eyes seeming to light up from the inside as they go back to the creepy, staring-right-through-you sort of look.

"Nice to meet you, Ev – oh, I'm sorry," he says, smiling tightly at her. "You go by Tara now. Nice to meet you, Tara Cole. I am Castiel."

Now she really _is_ freaked out, and she sticks her hand in her purse for the gun she has stashed in there, but Castiel puts a gentle hand on her wrist. "Don't worry," he says, but that only makes her heart beat even faster, fear roiling in her gut like acid.

"I'll worry if I want to," she says, yanking her wrist out of his grip. "And you better stay away from me."

He nods. "I didn't mean to scare you. You noticed my friends weren't real FBI agents. I needed to distract you." He glances over his shoulder at his friends, nodding slightly and stepping aside. "Apologies for touching you, but I thought perhaps you wouldn't want to give away that you had a concealed weapon in your purse. Better to keep your suspect unaware."

He turns his head and stares the creepy stare at her mark, who is thankfully three – or maybe four – sheets to the wind and doesn't notice. "He is tragically stupid," Castiel says and Tara shrugs one shoulder because it's not like she can disagree, "and keeps the evidence you're looking for in a shoebox under the couch. There will be enough there to assist you with your…" He returns his gaze to her, warm now, not creepy, and again glowing from the inside. "…your _case_."

Tara can't remember the last time she's been this off-balance, and this strange person has her completely off her game. It's strange, too, that he hangs around with the two lunkheads grilling the bartender. 

"They're good men, the Winchesters," he says. She's fairly certain that's not the name that was on the guy's fake badge. And come to think of it, Winchesters, one name for both of them, like family, like… brothers. It's so obvious now, the way the not-feds walk, hold themselves, move together – that's only born of spending a lifetime with someone. 

They feel like good guys too, the same way Parker, Hardison, and Eliot feel like good guys, the way she can tell when she so much as looks at them.

"C'mon, Cas," the pretty one says, and Castiel smiles fleetingly, his face back to impassive before he glances at them over his shoulder and nods his assent.

"Tell your friends that if they really want to look FBI, they'll get shoulder holsters for their guns and cut their hair." She looks Castiel up and down and reaches out to straighten his tie without thinking. "You pretty much look like a fed, though."

"Thank you," Castiel says, smiling at her. "I will pass on your suggestions. I doubt they will take them, but your expertise is appreciated."

Castiel turns and follows the Winchesters out, and Tara takes one look at her mark, now face down in the booth, and decides to check his place while he's down for the count. Maybe she'll even check under the couch.


End file.
